Disney’s Bambi is from Austria

Felix Salten is the author of one of our most beloved fairy tales of our time: Bambi.
Very few people know that he was Viennese and sold the rights to the book for $5000 to Walt Disney during his Swiss exile during WWII.

Salten's Bambi in the Disney version

The author was born as Siegmund Saltzmann in 1869, due to his father’s debt, he had to leave high school and work in an insurance company to support his family. During his free time, he wrote short stories for newspapers like: Berliner Morgenpost, the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung and the Neue Freie Presse. In turn of the century Vienna, he was a good friend of Arthur Schnitzler, whose work was recently made accessible to a broader audience through Kubrik’s adaptation of “The Dream Novel” – “Eyes Wide Shut” starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. Salten also wrote a book with a distinctly sexual context, Josephine Mutzenbacher (1906), which was written under another pen name but still brought him world fame. Schnitzler and Salten belonged to the group of “Young Vienna Circle” artists like Stefan Zweig, Ödön von Horvath and Hugo von Hoffmannsthal who met in the Vienna Café Griensteidl.
In 1930 following an invitation of the Carnegie Foundation, Salten travelled to the US and subsequently published his impressions “Five Minutes America”. From 1927 to 1933 he was the president of the Austrian P.E.N. Club. Controversy sparked as he collaborated with the Nazi Delegation in Dubrovnik in 1933. He married actress Ottilie Metz and had two children, Paul and Anna.

Presumably he had the idea for Bambi (the name is based on the Italian word for kid – bambino) while vacationing in the Alps.
The animated Disney film, released in 1942, is said to be Walt Disney’s all-time favorite picture. It sparked some controversy upon its US release, particularly when the American Rifleman’s Association made a public statement against the film’s depiction of hunters, calling the movie “an insult to American sportsmen”. Still, the movie remains a classic. Earlier this year Disney issued a Platinum DVD Edition of the re-mastered Bambi with plenty of Bonus features. The screening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, followed by a panel, hosted by critic Leonard Maltin mid June this year marked another honor for the movie.
Salten himself never saw much of the money made from his work. His daughter Anna renewed the rights in 1954 and entered a more satisfactory agreement with Disney. After her death, the rights were sold by her husband to Twin Books. He and his daughter Lea founded the international charity Ropka, the Tibetan word for help. It provides help for destitute Tibetan women.

Go to GERMAN VERSION

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